The hardest thing about our business is maintaining a balance between work and the rest of our life, as most of us spend time working away from home. Being away from home for long periods of time can be stressful for anyone, but what happens when we have to deal with a sudden change in routine? What do we do when something happens to interfere with the gig? Whether it’s a new child or a death in the family, how do you adapt while maintaining the old adage, “The show must go on?”
I found the most permanent thing in life is death. It’s the one thing I know that defines forever. I guess there are two types of death: the inevitable failure of one’s organs versus the sudden unexpected tragedy. How do we in the entertainment field deal with this? We all have to travel, so how do we plan our work schedule if we know someone we love is terminally ill? Do we still go to work with the knowledge that we will soon have to stop everything and grieve? Of course we do. Death is different than a birth or a marriage. You can’t set a date for it.
If this is the unfortunate case for any of you, I’m sorry. But the truth of the matter is that no event is going to cancel because of our personal woes. So what do we do? If you’re any good at this business, you cover your ass in advance. How? First, make sure all your ducks are in a row. By this, I mean you need to do all your advance paper work efficiently so anyone else can decipher it and take over. Make all the phone calls now that you would normally put off until a week before the event. Talk to the people you work for and explain your crisis before you take the gig. They may prefer to use someone else in your position.
But of course nobody can really time these things. And the fact is that certain clients really want to see the same faces each year at the same gigs. And we want to see that nice paycheck. And if your ego is as big as mine, you want to make sure everything you designed is well executed. But if you know of impending doom in advance, you should cover your ass ahead of the time you have to get on that plane.
A few years ago, I was standing by for a member of my family to pass on from cancer. At the same time, I was booked as a programmer on a show Roy Bennett was designing. I warned Roy that I might have to leave suddenly. But before I took the gig, I contacted my friend, AJ Penn, another designer/programmer. He was finishing another show and was slated to head home in a couple of days. I explained my situation, and because he’s a great guy, he offered to bail me out if necessary. A week later, it was.
Life throws you twists. These twists are usually a lot more important than any gig. I once sat down with Michael Keller to program a tour on a WYSIWYG system. The week before the meeting, I had taken my yearly routine physical exam. While I was sitting behind the console, the doc called with the results and told me that I may have cancer. It’s not a good scenario to be in and quickly changes your outlook on your immediate future. Programming a lighting console was no longer important to me. But not leaving my friend high and dry was. Mike looked at me with a question mark in his eyes. I called AJ again.
I know a lot of people, so it’s easy for me to find a replacement for a gig. But what if you are the one running a company and are responsible for the well-being of everyone in that company, and they rely on you? Ask yourself, who will to run this ship should something catastrophic happen?
If you are fortunate enough to work for a large company, hopefully you were smart enough to surround yourself with good personnel who you’ve taught over the years. These people will work the extra time to cover you while you heal. But what do you do if you’re a part of a small mom-and-pop company? Or a design firm that depends on one large gig every year to make its nut? Who will cover for those people? I don’t have the answer. It’s almost as if we need personal gig loss insurance policies.
What about the unexpected loss of someone close to you? There can’t be anything more disruptive to your work and personal life. You have no time to plan for grief; you just get thrown into a world of pain. I heard a story about a guy who found out about a death in his family right before he went on stage. He was able to shut it out, perform and then get a plane home before he broke down. That takes real strength, more than I could probably muster.
Years ago, I was on one of those gigs from hell. Both lighting consoles had taken a power surge and blown up that morning. It took all day for a computer geek to rebuild the power supplies so the show could happen at all. While dealing with this crisis, my girlfriend called Chris Lamb (pro-duction manager of the show) to tell him she had some bad news about a friend of mine passing away. He told her the situation I was in, and they thought it wise to delay the news. As soon as all was working and the show got underway, Chris called me into his office where he had my girl-friend on the phone. I pretty much lost it that night and was unable to function at all. But I had a great crew, and they rallied behind me, covering my ass for the show and load-out.
The way I deal with grief is by throwing myself into my work. No, it’s not original. When I get lost in designing CAD stuff or programming cues, it takes my mind off of what is really bothering me. Perhaps this is wrong, and I am trying to skirt the grieving process. Perhaps after losing a few friends and family, I no longer wish to expend all my energy on negative matters. Perhaps my mother gave me the best advice from her own death-bed. She told me to shed a few tears for an hour, and then go have some drinks with my family. She said “Don’t fret over an inevitable thing that we all must come to terms with, but celebrate the great life I had.”
I don’t have answers to anything I’ve been pondering here. We all must deal with death in our own way. But when it comes time, I’d like to think that I left enough pieces of the puzzle intact so someone else can finish whatever I was working on when I get that call. Or for that matter, when the grim reaper comes looking for me. No gig is going to stop just because I can’t make it.
Nook is alive and well and can be reached at nschoenfeld@plsn.com.
